Groups of seven- to nine-year olds learning to read in English and German were given three types of reading tasks. Whereas reading time and error rates in numeral and number word reading were very similar across the two orthographies, the German children showed a big advantage in reading the nonsense words, suggesting adoption of different…

Students from 38 colleges with high scores on an advanced placement examination essay and low scores on the multiple-choice portion were compared with students with the opposite pattern. The pattern was not related to college grades, but was related to other test performance. (SLD)

Compares spelling of adult second-language English users with native children and adult first-language users, using data from 1993 NFER survey of L1 children, from a UK university English-as-a-Foreign Language test for overseas students and work by overseas students in England. Comparison showed similar error rates and distribution of errors…

Spelling errors of 215 Grade 6 English-as-a-Second-Language learners were examined with a view to gaining an understanding of how these children construe and misconstrue the structure of their second language. It was found that unstressed grammatical function words proved particularly difficult for the learners to render in writing. They had…

We present a methodology for designing better learning environments. In Phase 1, 6th-grade students' (n = 223) prior knowledge was assessed using a difficulty factors assessment (DFA). The assessment revealed that scaffolds designed to elicit contextual, conceptual, or procedural knowledge each improved students' ability to add and subtract…

This article explores selected phonological measures, their relationships to one another, and how groups differentiated by such measures change over time during intervention. Relationships among global quantitative measures of severity (percent consonants correct), measures of variability/consistency, and measures of whole-word complexity and…

The approximate degrees of freedom Welch-James (WJ) and Brown-Forsythe (BF) procedures for testing within-subjects effects in multivariate groups by trials repeated measures designs were investigated under departures from covariance homogeneity and normality. Empirical Type I error and power rates were obtained for least-squares estimators and…

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine whether the expressive language characteristics of typically developing (TD) children learning English as a second language (ESL) have similarities to the characteristics of the English that is spoken by monolingual children with specific language impairment (SLI), and whether this could result in the…

Using Kazemi's and Stipek's (2001) framework of classroom practice, the discourse between students enrolled in a mathematics-for-teachers course and their instructor is examined. The teacher's practice is in transition from a focus on having students share multiple strategies toward a practice that additionally includes the mathematical…

Eight independent variables (differential item functioning [DIF] detection method, purification procedure, item response model, mean latent trait difference between groups, test length, DIF pattern, magnitude of DIF, and percentage of DIF items) were manipulated, and two dependent variables (Type I error and power) were assessed through…

The current emphasis in second language teaching lies in the achievement of communicative effectiveness. In line with this approach, pronunciation training is nowadays geared towards helping learners avoid serious pronunciation errors, rather than eradicating the finest traces of foreign accent. However, to devise optimal pronunciation training…

The phonologically transparent Persian orthography is normally transcribed with two distinct spellings; words spelled with vowels (letters) transcribed as a fixed part of the spelling (transparent) and words spelled with vowels (diacritics) omitted (opaque). Three groups of Persian readers, namely developmental dyslexics (n = 29, mean age = 9.4,…

The empirical performance of the technique proposed by P. O. Johnson and J. Neyman (1936) (the JN technique) and the modification of R. F. Potthoff (1964) was studied in simulated data settings. The robustness of the two JN techniques was investigated with respect to their ability to control Type I and Type III errors. Factors manipulated in the…

It is commonly believed that the quality of original cataloging on OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) and RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) significantly differs. Past stereotypes reflected the fact that OCLC traditionally emphasized increasing the size of the database, while RLIN ascribed top priority to cataloging quality. The…

A certain group of English verbs, the ergatives, is consistently mis-passivized in Chinese-speakers' interlanguage. Comparison of the ergative construction in Chinese and English shows that they share similar properties. However, this does not seem to facilitate learning of the target English construction. Furthermore, the passive ergatives are…